Law Commons^™

All In The Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi

Faculty Scholarship

Your essay “Pregnant Man?” highlights many significant issues concerning the intersection of law, gender, sexuality, race, class, and family. In an earlier article A House Divided: The Invisibility of the Multiracial Family, we explored many of these issues as they relate to multiracial families, including our own. Specifically, we, a black female-white male married couple, analyzed the language in housing discrimination statutes to demonstrate how law and society function together to frame the normative ideal of family as heterosexual and monoracial. Our article examined the daily social privileges of monoracial, heterosexual couples as a means of revealing the invisibility of …

A Beautiful Lie: Exploring Rhinelander V. Rhinelander As A Formative Lesson On Race, Identity, Marriage, And Family, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the past and present social meanings of what occurred during a 1920s New York trial court case, Rhinelander v. Rhinelander. Rhinelander involved a claim by Leonard Kip Rhinelander, a white socialite, who filed for annulment of his marriage to Alice Beatrice Jones, a woman of racially ambiguous heritage. Leonard claimed that Alice committed fraud that went to the essence of their marriage by failing to inform him that she was of "colored" blood. According to legend, Leonard and Alice were madly in love, and Leonard filed the lawsuit only because of his father, who refused to accept …

Undercover Other, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay argues in favor of legally recognizing same-sex marriages by exploring the similarities in passing between members of same-sex marriages/relationships and interracial marriages/relationships. Specifically, this Essay unpacks the claim that the ability of gays and lesbians to pass as heterosexual distinguishes the ban on same-sex marriages from former bans on interracial marriages. Part I of this Essay first describes policy-based critiques of a Loving-based argument for legalizing same-sex marriage, or as one scholar has coined, of playing the Loving card by analogizing the racism that motivated anti-miscegenation statues that the Supreme Court struck down in 1967 to the anti-gay …

Child Placement Decisions: The Relevance Of Facial Resemblance And Biological Relationships, David J. Herring

Articles

This article discusses two studies of evolution and human behavior addressing child-adult relationships and explores implications for policies and practices surrounding placement of children in foster homes. The first study indicates that men favor children whose facial features resemble their own facial features. This study may justify public child welfare decisionmakers in considering facial resemblance as they attempt to place children in safe foster homes.

The second study indicates that parents are likely to invest more in children who are biologically related to them, thus enhancing their long term well-being. Among other implications, this study may justify public child welfare …

Sweep Searches--The Rights Of The Community, And The Guarantees Of The Fourth And First Amendments: Moms Of The Chicago Public Housing Complex, Revisit Your Civil And Constitutional Rights And Save Your Babies, Lundy Langston

Journal Publications

African-American babies are an endangered species. They have the potential to live to the ripe old age of fourteen. We are singing new songs of overcoming-overcoming the loss of our babies. However, it's the same song: the lyrics are Black, and the music is, as always, White. Across the nation let us hold hands, let us gather together, let us save our babies. Will the music, the lyrics of our collective songs, save our babies? Is there a collective voice? There must be a collective voice if we are to save our babies and WE must save them if we …

Force African-American Fathers To Parent Their Delinquent Sons - A Factor To Be Considered At The Dispositional Stage, Lundy Langston

Journal Publications

What species can survive and function when a substantial segment of its young male population is harnessed by the burdens of substance abuse, unemployment, and incarceration? Empirical data suggests that these maladies have infected African-American males at a rate alarmingly disproportionate to that of other races. This trend, if it continues, suggests that America is creating a dysfunctional class. In this Article the term "dysfunctional" refers to a predicament wherein African-American males engage in violent activities.' Their conduct may be attributable to their inability to contribute to the family or smaller groups which form the foundation of the social order …